PPD: Multisensory Calculus for Visually Impaired People

斯塔顿岛学院计算机科学系与巴鲁克学院视障人士计算机中心合作，提出了一项为期三年的研究与发展项目。它将制作一套包括有声图形的教材，以增加视障大学生对科学、数学、工程和技术（SMET）定量学科的接触。各参与机构已为该项目的计算机辅助方法进行了开发，并用于编制坐标几何微积分前单元。具体的目标是进一步扩大访问的微积分尽快可行。在三年期间，该项目将编制关于单变量函数的基本微分和积分微积分的计算机辅助课程材料，并在时间和资源允许的情况下尽可能多地加以应用。每年的成果将包括文字和超过40个图文，配以有声和盲文字幕，并配有配套的电脑文件。文本将以供屏幕阅读器读取的ASCII文本的形式录制在录音带上，并录制在CD-ROM上。还将为有远见的顾问和导师提供打印文本。在可能的情况下，这些资料将免费在参与机构的网站上发布。该项目的更大目标是使有视力障碍的学生能够直接阅读技术图形，而不依赖视力辅助。该项目的独特之处在于，它将这项技术应用到一个明确而详细的学习课程中，以满足视障学生的需求。该方法可用于在任何年级的任何课程中纳入图形材料。如果将该项目的技术推广到K-16年级的所有年级，将大大提高SMET对视力障碍人士的总体可及性。虽然这个项目的具体材料是根据有严重视觉障碍的大学生的需要而开发的，但它们应该适用于任何具有中等或更高水平的初级代数和几何背景的人，以及任何程度的障碍。此外，本课程的核心元素，文本和图形，将不会特别局限于计算机技术的当前艺术状态，而是将被设计成能够适应技术的发展。具体课程内容将至少涵盖SMET课程中微积分第一学期的常规内容：初等函数的微分、它们的组成和隐定义函数的微分，并应用于变化率、最大值和最小值，以及绘制图形；初等函数的积分，并应用于计算面积、体积、质量、弧长等。如可行，将增加数值方法、形式积分技术、微分方程、无穷序列和无穷级数等主题。

The Computer Science Department of the College of Staten Island, in collaboration with the Computer Center for Visually Impaired People of Baruch College, proposes a Research and Development Project over the course of three years. It will produce a set of teaching materials including audiotactile graphics to enhance access by visually impaired college students to the quantitative disciplines in Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Technology (SMET). The computer assistive methodology for the project has been developed at the participating institutions and deployed in the development of a precalculus unit on coordinate geometry. The specific goal is to further extend access to the calculus as rapidly as feasible. In the three-year period, the project will create computer assistive course materials for basic differential and integral calculus for functions of a single variable and as much of the applications as time and resources permit. In each year, the deliverables will consist of text coupled with more than forty graphics plates captioned in both audio and braille with supporting computer files. The text will be produced on audio tape, as ASCII text to be read by a screen reader, and on CD-ROM. There will also be a print text for sighted advisors and tutors. Insofar as possible, the materials will be freely disseminated on the web sites of the participating institutions. The larger goal of the project is to enable students with visual impairments to read technical graphics directly with little dependence upon sighted assistance. The project is unique in deploying the technology to an extended course of study planned explicitly and in detail to meet the needs of students who are visually impaired. The methodology can be used to incorporate graphical materials in any course at any grade level. The general accessibility of SMET to people with visual impairments would be greatly improved by deployment of this project's techniques to all grades, K-16. Although the specific materials of this project are developed with the needs of college students with severe visual impairments, they should be useable by anyone with the requisite background in elementary algebra and geometry at the secondary or higher level and with any degree of impairment. Moreover, the core elements, text and graphics, of the course will not be specifically bound to the current state of the art in computer technology but will be designed so that they can be adapted to technology as it evolves. The specific course content will cover at least the conventional first semester of a calculus in a SMET curriculum: differentiation of elementary functions, their compositions, and implicitly defined functions, with application to rates of change, maxima and minima, and sketching graphs: integration of elementary functions with application to calculation of area, volume, mass, arclength, and the like. As feasible, such topics as numerical methods, techniques of formal integration, differential equations, and infinite sequences and series will be added.